


i keep coming back to you

by clawsnbeak



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (nothing that isn't already canon), Alternate Universe - Veterinarians, Animals, Boys Kissing, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, Veterinary Clinic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 08:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20112112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clawsnbeak/pseuds/clawsnbeak
Summary: As Adam is walking home from yet another tiring day at the vet clinic, he meets Ronan, a man with an unusual affinity for animals who is trying to save a little kitten. Their paths cross and their futures intertwine as they try to keep the kitten alive.Basically co-parenting a kitten. Do you really need more?





	i keep coming back to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to a new series! It was an idea I couldn't get out of my head so here we are. Tags will be updated as we go along.
> 
> I also want to thank the wonderful [EmmaLThornwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaLThornwood/pseuds/EmmaLThornwood) for being the sweetest beta ever!

“Come on! Work with me here.”

Adam Parrish did not have time for this. There was never enough time in his life. Not when he was in high school and struggled to make ends meet, not when he got into the university of his dreams and had to work his ass off to keep the scholarship he had so desperately wanted, and especially not now after a gruesome day at the clinic. Why he chose to be a vet of all things, he didn’t know, but he loved he job, just not the inevitable sadness that came with it. There was a saying he tried to hold on to during his training which said, “don’t get attached”. He repeated this to himself today when he had to put one of his favourite dogs down. It was an old one with soft brown fur that never failed to make Adam smile in the years he had treated him. Adam diagnosed him with cancer today and the owner, understandably, didn’t want to put this old dog through that misery, so they brought him to sleep.

Hours and more appointments later and Adam was finally able to head home and clear his mind to prepare himself for another too-early morning. 

Well, that was the plan at least. Maybe it was his intrinsically concerned nature or just sheer curiosity. Either way, he found himself peering through the darkness and heavy rainfall to find the outline of a man hunched over a strip of trash cans.

“You’re not making it easy on me, are you?” Adam heard, as he stepped closer despite himself. Why he was approaching a stranger in the middle of the night while it was raining harder than it had, in small-town Henrietta, in years, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the desperation in the man’s voice, the pleading tone it took as he continued to talk to something or someone hidden in the shadows.

“Do you need help?” Adam asked, keeping a safe enough distance that he could just make out a few details of the man, illuminated by the lamppost not far from where they were standing.

“There’s a kitten here and I can’t get to it,” the man admitted reluctantly, finally turning to Adam to look him up and down. “But I don’t think you can help me with that.”

_Fucking great_.

“Is it injured?” Adam asked, moving closer to take a look for himself. There was a soft meowing that he could just hear over the sound of the rain hitting the trash cans. The kitten was shying away from every attempt he made to reach it, but Adam could see that it was unsteady, trembling from the cold.

“Wait here!” he told the man, and rushed to his car, which was parked close by. He opened the trunk and removed his gear, always readily available in case of emergencies. When he returned, the man eyed him warily.

“I’m a vet,” Adam explained. “And I’m gonna need your help.”

Adam set down a tray with some dry cat food on the ground in front of one of the trash cans and tried to shield it from the rain with a discarded lid. The kitten sized it up, reminding Adam of how the man had regarded him in the same distrusting way. He started murmuring to the kitten then, soft and soothing.

Little by little, the kitten took hesitant steps toward the food and sniffed at it. When it was deemed okay, the kitten began nibbling at it carefully. Adam extracted a miniature flashlight from the front pocket of his dress shirt and pointed it at the ground next to the kitten so as not to scare it off. He gasped audibly when he saw the state it was in. Blood coated its fur and open wounds were visible on its side flank.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” the man swore, taking in the state of the small animal as well. It was visibly bothering him—even _Adam_ was bothered, and he saw cases like these more often than he cared to. He needed this man’s help, though, so he switched into what Noah liked to call his “Vet State” meaning that his breath came out steadier, his voice was sure and he forced his hands to stop trembling from the cold.

“Hold the flashlight,” he ordered the man. “Don’t point it at the kitten, it’ll get scared if you do.”

The man raised his eyebrows but complied. The kitten looked back and forth between them but seemed to see no danger, as it continued to eat.

Adam swooped in and smoothly but carefully and scooped the kitten into his hands. It looked terrified, but didn’t dare move. Something in its eyes reminded Adam of himself. Something he had buried deep in the past but was threatening to come out with every second he spent holding this scared little animal.

“I’m gonna have to take it to the clinic,” Adam said, placing the kitten in the travel bag he had already laid out. The bag was stuffed with blankets, which Adam placed the kitten on gently. He then took a handful of food from the tray and tossed it inside, zipping the bag closed and lifting it carefully from the ground.

The man didn’t take his eyes off the bag. He studied it with concern, and made no move to leave.

“You—” Adam started and cleared his throat nervously. “You can come to the clinic with me. If you want?”

“Sure,” the man said, obviously trying his best to sound casual, but Adam knew better. There was a hint of panic in his voice that Adam only ever heard with pet owners, not just random people who found kittens in the rain.

_Who was this man?_

Adam briefly wondered if it was a good idea to invite a stranger into his car, but despite the buzzcut and the sharp features—made visible by the passing lights of cars—he didn’t look like he would hurt Adam in any way. He had to keep reminding himself that not everybody was out there to get him. Not everybody was a bad person. And with the concern the man had shown for the kitten, Adam knew he would be alright.

The car ride was silent, but funnily enough, not awkward. Adam was rushing through traffic and was happy he didn’t have distractions—he had to concentrate on getting the kitten as quickly as he could to the clinic if he wanted to increase its chances of staying alive.

“What the hell are you doing back?” Blue demanded the minute Adam walked through the door.

“Emergency,” Adam said, before disappearing into the surgical room. It was a precaution, but Adam predicted some kind of surgery would be necessary. The kitten did not look good. Now, under the bright, fluorescent lights of the clinic, he could see that the kitten was in a worse state than he’d thought. It was still crying, even when Adam laid it on the table, which Adam recognized from experience as a cry of pain. He cooed soothingly as he set up for surgery, something he was sure now was absolutely necessary.

The clean smell of the room always put Adam at ease, even in the most stressful moments. It reminded him that he was here, that he was _alive_. Even if it often brought a type of pain to his chest he could only recognise at the familiarity of picking at old wounds.

He hardly even noticed that the man and Blue had followed him into the room . 

“I keep you updated the moment I know more,” Adam promised, ushering the man out quickly

“I’m staying,” the man said resolutely, crossing his arms in front of his muscular chest like a petulant child.

“You really can’t,” Adam said apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s policy.”

Blue eventually kicked him out with a sneer that matched the man’s perfectly. If he hadn’t been in the middle of such a dire case, Adam would’ve laughed. Blue was one of the kindest people he knew, but she was not _nice_, and he loved her for it. There was something funny and disorienting about such a small woman who could look threatening enough to scare a big, muscular, heavily tattooed guy away with the raise of an eyebrow.

“Adam, you’re overworking yourself,” Blue said to him, her gentleness a stark contrast against her interaction with the stranger.

“It’s an emergency, Blue,” Adam repeated. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You don’t have to do everything alone, you know.”

Adam sighed and smiled at Blue tiredly. “I know.”

Blue finally took a look at the surgical table and frowned. She reached out slowly in attempt to pet the kitten, but it wouldn’t let her, trying to wriggle away with the minimal energy it still had.

“It’s so small,” Blue said worriedly, turning away only to begin gathering sanitary equipment and surgical tools. 

“I know,” Adam said, inspecting the kitten as best as he could through the matted blood. It was still squirming around, but it seemed as though the willpower to do so was draining quickly.

“I might need your help for this one,” Adam admitted sheepishly.

“You got me,” Blue replied. They got to work. Blue and Adam laid out everything they might need within a hand’s reach. The pressure of time was tangible, the kitten had so little life left. Adam felt a rush of adrenaline, one he felt often before he started surgery. It was something that grounded him and got him some of the most gruesome ones. 

Washing the kitten was their first priority—they couldn’t take chances with getting bacteria in the open wounds that littered its skin. They then had to dress the wounds and check for other injuries, which led to the discovery that the kitten didn’t want to be touched on its left paw. Blue pointed out the swelling surrounding the paw, and they wrapped it in a splint.

There wasn’t much they could do while there was so little life left in the kitten. They would have to wait until it had recovered to at least some degree before they could go through with the surgery. The kitten wouldn’t survive otherwise.

It was two hours later when they finally left the operating room. The stranger was still sitting in the waiting room, which surprised Adam. He’d thought the man would’ve given up and left by now, but here he was. His head was leaning against the corkboard filled with posters about healthy pet diets behind him. He was breathing softly, sprawled out in a cheap, plastic chair.

The man looked softer like this. The harsh lines of his face had faded away, and he suddenly looked much younger. Much more approachable.

Adam gently shook him awake and asked if they could discuss everything in his office. The man complied, following behind him groggily. There wasn’t much furniture inside, but the room was overflowing with scattered stacks of books, and there were various leaflets strewn across his desk. With the amount Adam worked, he didn’t have much time to tidy up.

Adam gestured to the seat in front of his desk and sat down in his own chair behind it. The man looked uncomfortable and impatient; his eyes were darting around Adam’s office, and it was starting to make him feel self-conscious about the state it was in.

“My name is Doctor Adam Parrish,” he told the man, holding out his hand.

“Ronan Lynch,” the man said back, eyeing his hand with an expression Adam couldn’t read. He took it slowly and shook once before letting go. Adam pretended his hand didn’t tingle when he pulled back.

“Well, Ronan,” Adam started, rubbing his forehead. “The kitten is stable, but we’re going to have to keep her here just in case something goes wrong. We have her on IV fluids now to strengthen her.”

“What happens to her after?” Ronan asked, worried lines etching into his otherwise smooth forehead.

“If nobody wants her, we have to put her in an animal shelter.”

Ronan shot up out of his chair before Adam even finished his sentence. “You can’t fucking do that!”

“Sir—”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, you’re gonna heal her and then just throw her away like it’s nothing?” Ronan’s eyes on him felt like fire burning through his skin. He would’ve stepped back if he wasn’t still sitting.

“We’re a clinic,” Adam tried to explain as calmly as he could, but something in this man was making his blood boil, and he wanted nothing more but to push back until he pushed too far.

“So?”

“We can’t keep animals here, okay?” Adam said, growing more and more frustrated. “I wish we could, but we can’t. So unless you take her—”

"Done,” Ronan said determinedly.

Adam stared at him for a second, his mouth falling slightly open before he corrected himself. “You mean you’ll take her?”

“Yes, Parrish, I will take her.”

“Taking care of a kitten, especially one who isn’t healthy, is not easy,” Adam said carefully. Truth was, he really hoped Ronan would take her. Adam wasn’t someone to whom trust came easily. It took time and much more effort anyone else had to make. There was something about Ronan, though, the big man who had looked at a little animal with so much care it made Adam’s insides ache. But he had to be sure. He couldn’t give the kitten away to someone who wasn’t up for the task.

“I can do it,” Ronan said resolutely. “Where do I sign?”

“Nowhere, yet.”

Ronan sighed and looked ready to throw himself back into battle, but Adam raised a hand to calm him down. “We need to see if she makes it through the night first. Then we have to take some tests, vaccinate her probably. She has a long way to go.”

At Adam’s words, Ronan’s body relaxed back into the chair. Adam bit back a relieved smile.

“You can leave your number.” Adam picked through his desk and found an empty sheet of paper. “We’ll be in contact with you.”

Ronan pulled his phone, with a heavily cracked screen, out of his pocket and searched for his number. Adam tried to look at anything but at the way his eyelashes were feathered across the tops of his cheekbones. The softness of his lashes was a sharp contrast to the harsh lines which etched out the rest of his face.

When Ronan handed back the piece of paper, Adam’s hands stayed at a safe distance from his.

“I’ll see you later, then.” Ronan smirked, his lips curling up for the first time since they had met, and walked out of the office.

Adam felt himself sag against his chair. He was definitely in for something he wasn’t even remotely prepared for.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [tumblr](clawsnbeak.tumblr.com)


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